It almost makes one think that in some odd way there must be two worlds as it were...."
"At least Two," said the Vicar.
"Lying somewhere close together, and yet scarcely suspecting...."
"As near as page to page of a book."
"Penetrating each other, living each its own life. This is really a delicious dream!"
"And never dreaming of each other."
"Except when people go a dreaming!"
"Yes," said the Angel thoughtfully. "It must be something of the sort.
And that reminds me. Sometimes when I have been dropping asleep, or drowsing under the noon-tide sun, I have seen strange corrugated faces just like yours, going by me, and trees with green leaves upon them, and such queer uneven ground as this.... It must be so. I have fallen into another world."
"Sometimes," began the Vicar, "at bedtime, when I have been just on the edge of consciousness, I have seen faces as beautiful as yours, and the strange dazzling vistas of a wonderful scene, that flowed past me, winged shapes soaring over it, and wonderful--sometimes terrible--forms going to and fro. I have even heard sweet music too in my ears.... It may be that as we withdraw our attention from the world of sense, the pressing world about us, as we pa.s.s into the twilight of repose, other worlds.... Just as we see the stars, those other worlds in s.p.a.ce, when the glare of day recedes.... And the artistic dreamers who see such things most clearly...."
They looked at one another.
"And in some incomprehensible manner I have fallen into this world of yours out of my own!" said the Angel, "into the world of my dreams, grown real."
He looked about him. "Into the world of my dreams."
"It is confusing," said the Vicar. "It almost makes one think there may be (ahem) Four Dimensions after all. In which case, of course," he went on hurriedly--for he loved geometrical speculations and took a certain pride in his knowledge of them--"there may be any number of three dimensional universes packed side by side, and all dimly dreaming of one another. There may be world upon world, universe upon universe. It"s perfectly possible. There"s nothing so incredible as the absolutely possible. But I wonder how you came to fall out of your world into mine...."
"Dear me!" said the Angel; "There"s deer and a stag! Just as they draw them on the coats of arms. How grotesque it all seems! Can I really be awake?"
He rubbed his knuckles into his eyes.
The half-dozen of dappled deer came in Indian file obliquely through the trees and halted, watching. "It"s no dream--I am really a solid concrete Angel, in Dream Land," said the Angel. He laughed. The Vicar stood surveying him. The Reverend gentleman was pulling his mouth askew after a habit he had, and slowly stroking his chin. He was asking himself whether he too was not in the Land of Dreams.
VII.
Now in the land of the Angels, so the Vicar learnt in the course of many conversations, there is neither pain nor trouble nor death, marrying nor giving in marriage, birth nor forgetting. Only at times new things begin. It is a land without hill or dale, a wonderfully level land, glittering with strange buildings, with incessant sunlight or full moon, and with incessant breezes blowing through the aeolian traceries of the trees. It is Wonderland, with glittering seas hanging in the sky, across which strange fleets go sailing, none know whither. There the flowers glow in Heaven and the stars shine about one"s feet and the breath of life is a delight. The land goes on for ever--there is no solar system nor interstellar s.p.a.ce such as there is in our universe--and the air goes upward past the sun into the uttermost abyss of their sky. And there is nothing but Beauty there--all the beauty in our art is but feeble rendering of faint glimpses of that wonderful world, and our composers, our original composers, are those who hear, however faintly, the dust of melody that drives before its winds. And the Angels, and wonderful monsters of bronze and marble and living fire, go to and fro therein.
It is a land of Law--for whatever is, is under the law--but its laws all, in some strange way, differ from ours. Their geometry is different because their s.p.a.ce has a curve in it so that all their planes are cylinders; and their law of Gravitation is not according to the law of inverse squares, and there are four-and-twenty primary colours instead of only three. Most of the fantastic things of our science are commonplaces there, and all our earthly science would seem to them the maddest dreaming. There are no flowers upon their plants, for instance, but jets of coloured fire. That, of course, will seem mere nonsense to you because you do not understand Most of what the Angel told the Vicar, indeed the Vicar could not realise, because his own experiences, being only of this world of matter, warred against his understanding. It was too strange to imagine.
What had jolted these twin universes together so that the Angel had fallen suddenly into Sidderford, neither the Angel nor the Vicar could tell. Nor for the matter of that could the author of this story. The author is concerned with the facts of the case, and has neither the desire nor the confidence to explain them. Explanations are the fallacy of a scientific age. And the cardinal fact of the case is this, that out in Siddermorton Park, with the glory of some wonderful world where there is neither sorrow nor sighing, still clinging to him, on the 4th of August 1895, stood an Angel, bright and beautiful, talking to the Vicar of Siddermorton about the plurality of worlds. The author will swear to the Angel, if need be; and there he draws the line.
VIII.
"I have," said the Angel, "a most unusual feeling--_here_. Have had since sunrise. I don"t remember ever having any feeling--_here_ before."
"Not pain, I hope," said the Vicar.
"Oh no! It is quite different from that--a kind of vacuous feeling."
"The atmospheric pressure, perhaps, is a little different," the Vicar began, feeling his chin.
"And do you know, I have also the most curious sensations in my mouth--almost as if--it"s so absurd!--as if I wanted to stuff things into it."
"Bless me!" said the Vicar. "Of course! You"re hungry!"
"Hungry!" said the Angel. "What"s that?"
"Don"t you eat?"
"Eat! The word"s quite new to me."
"Put food into your mouth, you know. One has to here. You will soon learn. If you don"t, you get thin and miserable, and suffer a great deal--_pain_, you know--and finally you die."
"Die!" said the Angel. "That"s another strange word!"
"It"s not strange here. It means leaving off, you know," said the Vicar.
"We never leave off," said the Angel.
"You don"t know what may happen to you in this world," said the Vicar, thinking him over. "Possibly if you are feeling hungry, and can feel pain and have your wings broken, you may even have to die before you get out of it again. At anyrate you had better try eating. For my own part--ahem!--there are many more disagreeable things."
"I suppose I _had_ better Eat," said the Angel. "If it"s not too difficult. I don"t like this "Pain" of yours, and I don"t like this "Hungry." If your "Die" is anything like it, I would prefer to Eat. What a very odd world this is!"
"To Die," said the Vicar, "is generally considered worse than either pain or hunger.... It depends."
"You must explain all that to me later," said the Angel. "Unless I wake up. At present, please show me how to eat. If you will. I feel a kind of urgency...."
"Pardon me," said the Vicar, and offered an elbow. "If I may have the pleasure of entertaining you. My house lies yonder--not a couple of miles from here."
"_Your_ House!" said the Angel a little puzzled; but he took the Vicar"s arm affectionately, and the two, conversing as they went, waded slowly through the luxuriant bracken, sun mottled under the trees, and on over the stile in the park palings, and so across the bee-swarming heather for a mile or more, down the hillside, home.
You would have been charmed at the couple could you have seen them. The Angel, slight of figure, scarcely five feet high, and with a beautiful, almost effeminate face, such as an Italian old Master might have painted. (Indeed, there is one in the National Gallery [_Tobias and the Angel_, by some artist unknown] not at all unlike him so far as face and spirit go.) He was robed simply in a purple-wrought saffron blouse, bare kneed and bare-footed, with his wings (broken now, and a leaden grey) folded behind him. The Vicar was a short, rather stout figure, rubicund, red-haired, clean-shaven, and with bright ruddy brown eyes. He wore a piebald straw hat with a black ribbon, a very neat white tie, and a fine gold watch-chain. He was so greatly interested in his companion that it only occurred to him when he was in sight of the Vicarage that he had left his gun lying just where he had dropped it amongst the bracken.
He was rejoiced to hear that the pain of the bandaged wing fell rapidly in intensity.
PARENTHESIS ON ANGELS.
IX.